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Far From Heaven

2002, Movie, PG-13, 107 mins

Far From Heaven: Review

FAR FROM HEAVEN
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When Rainer Maria Fassbinder remade Douglas Sirk's classic 1954 melodrama ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (1955) as ALI, FEAR EATS THE SOUL (1974), he broadened Sirk's indictment of society's attitudes toward sex, age, gender roles and class to include race. Todd Haynes's own gorgeous replica has them both beat: His sexually neglected heroine (a flawless Julianne Moore) not only earns the opprobrium of her uptight, upper-class community by becoming romantically linked to a "Negro," but she now has a gay husband (Dennis Quaid) as well. Haynes also returns the action to a setting in which none of this would have been at all acceptable: the tony suburbs of Hartford, Conn., circa 1957. To all appearances, Cathy Whitaker (Moore) has everything a modern woman could be expected to want: a lovely home; a flock of the right sort of friends, led by socialite Eleanor Fine (Patricia Clarkson); two lovely children (Ryan Ward, Lindsay Andretta); and a handsome husband, Frank (Quaid), who makes a successful living as an advertising executive. But appearances can be deceiving, particularly in the intolerant and ever vigilant society in which Cathy and Frank move. The first crack in the glossy surface comes the night Frank is arrested for "loitering"; the crack becomes a chasm when Cathy pays an after-hours visit to Frank's office and finds her ideal husband in the arms of another man. Desperate to appear "normal," Frank delivers himself into the healing hands of a reparative psychiatrist (James Rebhorn) and the consolation of the liquor cabinet. Cathy, meanwhile, strikes up a cozy friendship with her African-American gardener, Raymond Deagan (24's Dennis Haysbert), and the scandalous association sets the forked tongues of the town's gossips wagging. From the stained-glass lighting and obvious rear-projection to Sandy Powell's color-coordinated costume design and Elmer Bernstein's lovely omnipresent score, Haynes flaunts his film's artifice. It's not meant to be taken as an imitation of life, but as a reproduction of the so-called "women's pictures" that depicted — and often questioned — the values of their era. Haynes brilliantly uses the restrictions of the genre to critique cultural expectations: Cathy's purposefully stilted dialogue remains bound by the front-office conventions of post-WWII Hollywood (interestingly, Frank's isn't), and unlike the men in the film, her options are as limited as the choice between a happy or a sad ending. Haynes took an enormous risk here, but thanks to his thoughtful script and an utterly sincere performance from Moore, what could have easily become a cold, calculated exercise in postmodern pastiche winds up a powerful and deeply moving example of melodramatic moviemaking. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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